LEBANON — Crawfordsville’s girls basketball season came to an end with a 68-21 loss to Danville in the first round of the 3A Section 25 tournament.
It is the second loss of the season to the Warriors, ranked No. 8 in the state in 3A, and closes the 2024-25 campaign at 4-18.
“Danville is a very good team,” Crawfordsville coach Joe Ferguson said. “They deserve their state ranking. We made the settle for outside shots early, and they just hit most of them. They turned us over a lot, and that led to a lot of transition buckets and easy layups, and we sure didn’t want that.”
The Warriors, who also won the last Sagamore Conference title with a 7-0 mark, improve to 18-5 on the season, and head into the sectional semifinals Friday.
They had two players in double-figures, as they jumped out to an early lead and never looked back.
Leading the way was Ava Walls with 14, followed by Madison Wethington with a dozen, For the night, the Warriors were 28-of-60 from the field, 6-of-21 from deep and 6-of-14 from the line.
The Athenians were led in scoring and rebounding by Celeste Moore. The senior’s final game had her with seven points and six rebounds. Overall, C’ville was 7-of-20 from the field, 1-of-7 from three, and 6-of-9 from the stripe. They did win the rebound battle 30-25.
“That’s a good thing,” Ferguson said of the rebound tally. “We had packed the zone in, but they hit a lot of shots anyway. I was proud of all the offensive rebounds we got.”
Turnovers were the issue for the Athenians, as they were forced into 39 miscues. Danville scored exactly one point for each TO.
Moore, along with Litzy Huesca, suited up for the last time. In addition, Reagan Cox, who had played and started earlier in the season, but was forced to the bench with injury, saw her last game.
“I have to give a lot of credit to Celeste and Litzy, plus Reagan,” Ferguson said of the trio. “They could have walked away after a tough last season, but they came back as leaders. Celeste broke up every huddle, and they led the friendships on the team. They will be missed.”
With just the three graduations, there is a lot of experience returning for next season.
“We have lots of girls back, and we will be better next year,” Ferguson said. “We had balanced scoring this season, and a lot of girls led the team at times. What we have to do in the offseason, and then into next season, is take those many little things we do well, and do them more often, with more consistency. Everyone played hard tonight, and that is the theme going on — we have to play hard every game.”
